Free Republic

POPULAR SENATOR’S 2007 ENDORSEMENT RECYCLED BY ROMNEY-ITES Here we go again … as if the final 24 hours of the 2012 South Carolina Republican presidential primary haven’t been sufficiently bizarre, into the fray at the last minute jumped U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint.Well … Jim DeMint circa 2007.A recorded phone message featuring DeMint’s 2007 endorsement of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney began burning up the phone lines in the Palmetto State late Friday – a desperate last-minute attempt by pro-Romney forces to fool people into thinking that DeMint is support their candidate on the eve of Saturday’s election.He’s not … something...

Donna Donella, one of the five women caught up in the charges of sexual harassment being leveled against Herman Cain, said Wednesday she is not an “accuser.” “I take issue with being labeled in the media as 'Accuser No. 5,' ” she said in an interview with The Washington Times-affiliated “America's Morning News” radio program. “I want to make it very clear that Herman Cain never sexually harassed me, I’ve never accused Herman Cain of sexually harassing me. The only reason that I came forward is because I saw behavior, the one day that I met him … that was...

It’s hard to take a victim seriously when she laughs as she tells her story of “victimhood.” Even though her voice broke briefly during the most explicit parts of the public statement, Sharon Bialek’s claims of sexual harassment by Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain were just another silly spectacle orchestrated by America’s most unscrupulous feminist attorney, Gloria Allred. Why do I discount Bialek’s story? I’ll answer with a few questions of my own. What was Bialek doing meeting Herman Cain in Washington, DC? What did she hope to achieve by a face-to-face meeting? If she were staying in New Jersey,...

DES MOINES -- Recent reports here in Iowa suggest that Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is having little trouble weathering accusations of sexual harassment dating from his time as head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s. On Monday, the Des Moines Register published an article, "Iowans appear ready to give Cain benefit of the doubt on sexual harassment allegations," in which the paper got in touch with participants who supported Cain in a recent poll. "None said the allegations had moved them to reject Cain as a potential pick," the paper reported. Other news organizations, following the Register's...

Who wants to be Paula Jones? Or Kathleen Willey or Anita Hill? All three women have accused political icons -- Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton and Clarence Thomas -- of sexually harassing them. And what did they get for sticking out their necks? Jones squared off against skater Tonya Harding on "Celebrity Boxing." Willey and Hill wrote books. They can't prove their allegations, and for the rest of their lives, they will have to live with the consequences. They are not in an enviable position. On Sunday, Politico reported that two women had accused GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain of "inappropriate...

Media Bias: The press is reporting that GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain was once accused of sexual harassment. OK, and Bill Clinton was elected to the White House not once but twice. So why is this even an issue? Cain admits he was accused in the 1990s while president of the National Restaurant Association. But he says he was "falsely accused" and the charges are "totally baseless." He maintains that "nothing happened." Even if something had happened, we wonder why the media are making such a big deal of this. Didn't the double election of Clinton eliminate sexual impropriety as...

Tea Party leaders confronted Rick Perry in his own back yard calling on him to use his power as governor to crack down on illegal immigration. JoAnn Fleming, chair of the Tea Party Caucus Advisory Committee of the Texas Legislature said, "The ball is in Gov. Perry's court. He needs to make a decision. He's running out of time." Perry favors giving in-state tuition to certain illegal immigrants which has put him at odds with many Tea Party activists. Ken Emmanuelson, a Dallas Tea Party activist, said Perry should issue an executive order overturning a Texas Department of Public Safety...

Phil Tetlock and Barbara Mellers were in a race against time to save their 15-year-old daughter, Jenny. As I reported last summer, Jenny developed a degenerative muscle disease nearly two years ago, soon after being vaccinated against the cervical-cancer-causing HPV. She became nearly completely paralyzed, though her mind was perfectly intact and she could still enjoy her pet parakeet, Hannah Montana, and Twilight. I've been E-mailing Phil regularly over the past year, and up until our last E-mail, one week ago, he had been holding out hope that they would be able to find a cure for his daughter—or to...

A Ron Paul supporter in Texas has taken out a full-page ad in a local alternative weekly newspaper seeking women who have slept with the presidential candidate. “Have you ever had sex with Rick Perry?” asks the ad, which runs in this week's Austin Chronicle. The ad was placed by Robert Morrow, who describes himself as a “self-employed investor and political activist” and a three-time delegate to the Texas state Republican convention.

That’s what the Obama campaign’s top political strategist told me this morning when I asked him about the latest 2012 candidate, Rick Perry. The Texas Governor made it clear his campaign will focus on his state’s record of job growth – Texas created more jobs than any other state since the recession. “When you examine the entire record what’s happened to education in that state, what’s happened to health care in that state, it’s a record of decimation not of progress,” David Axelrod told me. “I don’t think the picture of Texas is what people want for the country when...

The following facts about the federal budget deficit are, as far as I know, widely accepted: First. We have a long-term deficit problem that is due to the rising costs of federal entitlements, above all Medicare.Second. Our current deficit is substantially larger than normal, due to several factors:- The economic recession, which decreased the amount of tax revenue the federal government collects;- An increase in government spending, in the form of automatic stabilizers, to mitigate the human toll of the recession;- An increase in government spending, in the form of Keynesian stimulus, to restart the engine of economic growth;- The...

My last blog before I went on holiday was about the debt crisis. It's still going on. President Obama is to address the nation this evening. One of the most interesting interventions while I was away was from the UK's Liberal Democrat cabinet minister Vince Cable. He said the world's economy was being put in peril by "a few right-wing nutters" in the American Congress.If they are nutters, they are remarkably successful ones. The truth is that Tea Party-backed Republicans are winning this fight over raising the debt ceiling. It is far from over. But they've already won the argument...

One thinks of rats scurrying off a sinking ship. Meaning the new exodus of birthers from birtherism. Fox News now says in a blog post that it hardly pushed the birther issue at all. Wonder how folks got the idea Fox did that? Oh yeah: by watching Fox. And Rush Limbaugh says he “warned people this was a dead end.” This is the same Limbaugh who recently said there were “legitimate citizenship questions” about President Obama. Granted, some on the right were starting to distance themselves from this absurdity even before Obama finally released his long form birth certificate last...

Let's see: The Arab world is in tumult, with worrying signs that a Libya-style descent into civil war may be happening in Syria, where the stakes are unimaginably higher. Nearby, the warring Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, may be forming a united front. Closer to home, new leaders are being tapped for the Pentagon and the CIA. The government is fast approaching its legal debt ceiling. Painfully high gasoline prices have put the nation in a sour mood. Tornadoes are wreaking death and destruction across the South. So the leader of the free world summons the media for an important...

There are some cultures in which telling self-serving lies about your own ancestors would be so shameful as to be inconceivable. Michele Bachmann's culture is apparently not one of these. Bachmann, who's flirting with a presidential run, was in the early-primary state of Iowa last week for the Rediscover God in America conference. Bachmann was born in Iowa, as she told the crowd. But she couldn't leave it at just being an ordinary Iowan: "I'm actually even more than just an Iowan," she told her audience. "I'm a seventh-generation Iowan. Our family goes back to the 1850s, to the first...

Here we go again -- the politics of personal destruction. Liberal operatives have launched an assault on Congressman Darrell Issa (Republican Congressman) to try to silence him and put an end to the investigations he has started to reveal what the Obama administration has been up to the last two years. Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan of Politico report: Democrats are understandably obsessed with Darrell Issa -- he's built himself up as a one-man investigative machine aimed straight at the Obama presidency. But a handful of liberal political operatives in California -- including a former Hillary Clinton hand - are taking...

Another young product of Columbia J-school, another typical MSMer . . . Appearing on MSNBC's Daily Rundown today, NBC reporter Domenico Montanaro spoke of "the egregious Lee Atwater." What made the insult particularly . . . notorious is that it was entirely gratuitous, utterly unrelated to the subject at hand. Montanaro was reporting on the fact that Reince Priebus is the youngest RNC Chairman since Atwater. Montanaro first refers simply to "Lee Atwater," but then pauses and rephrases as "the notorious Lee Atwater." So Montanaro went out of his way to swipe at the late Atwater, who at the end...

There is one commentator whose words should enlighten us on the meaning of Saturday's shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the savage murders that took the lives of, among others, a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl. The person is Giffords herself. In an interview last March, the Arizona Democrat anticipated almost everything being said now and explained why what happened on Saturday is a violation of our national self-image as "a beacon." Our pride, she said, is that "we effect change at the ballot box" and not through "outbursts of violence." _________________________________ "We're on Sarah Palin's targeted list,"...

However, Jennifer Griffin of Fox News recklessly and irresponsibly claimed on Sunday morning that the killer was a political conservative. Using Obama officials as her sources, she reported that “intelligence gathered by the Department of Homeland Security and shared with state officials across the United States” had revealed “a strong suspicion” that the shooter was influenced by a conservative publication called American Renaissance (AR).

EXCERPT- Knowing very well most Americans objected to the "end of life" measure in the new health care legislation due to fears it could eventually give doctors a government financial incentive or even mandate to encourage severely ill patients to make life ending decisions too prematurely, Congressman Blumenauer thumbed his nose to the masses. It must be painfully obvious to Mr. Blumenauer that Americans did not want his end-of-life measure, so the Oregon Congressman decided to run around the will of the people by bureaucratic fiat. Instead, he and his fellow Democrats eventually omitted the measure from the bill only...

Lillian McEwen Says Thomas Had 'Obsession with Porn,' Bolsters Anita Hill Testimony A former girlfriend of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has broken her 19-year silence about a "serious" relationship the two had during the 1980s, reigniting the debate over Thomas' sexual behavior first sparked by Anita Hill's famed confirmation hearing testimony in 1991. Lillian McEwen, a retired prosecutor, law professor and administrative law judge, discussed her intimacy with Thomas in a lengthy television interview Friday with reporter Rebecca Cooper of ABC affiliate WJLA in Washington, D.C. "He was obsessed with pornography," McEwen told Cooper. "It was something...

<p>How many clicks does it take to soil a candidate’s online reputation? A prominent liberal activist would like to find out.</p> <p>Chris Bowers, campaign director for the Daily Kos, is launching a behind-the-scenes campaign against 98 House Republican candidates that attempts to capitalize on voters' Google search habits in the hopes of influencing midterm races.</p>

If you are an American and you travel anywhere in the world in an official capacity, one of your first meetings is likely to be with the local American Chamber of Commerce. Meeting with AmChams (as they are called) is an essential way to get a better understanding of how American businesses are doing in selling American products overseas. Members of AmChams (who are usually American) have an acute understanding of the local laws, the obstacles that foreign governments often place in the way of trade and the opportunities that exist for further investment. AmChams are the tip of the...

TOLEDO, Ohio — A report says a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Ohio dressed up in a German SS uniform to participate in Nazi reenactments. Excerpted per FR posting rules.

LOS ANGELES ( KTLA) -- A former housekeeper for gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman held a news conference Tuesday to tell the public she is not a puppet for attorney Gloria Allred, Jerry Brown or anyone else. Nicky Diaz Santillan, appeared with Allred for a third week to claim that Meg Whitman knew she was an illegal immigrant when she worked for the former eBay founder for nine years. Santillan says it was only after Whitman launched her campaign that she was fired. 'I want everyone to know my name," Santillan said. "I make my own decisions and I am nobody's...

Boiling Mad: A surprising and revealing look inside the Tea Party movement—where it came from, what it stands for, and what it means for the future of American politics They burst on the scene at the height of the Great Recession—angry voters gathering by the thousands to rail against bailouts and big government. Evoking the Founding Fathers, they called themselves the Tea Party. Within the year, they had changed the terms of debate in Washington, emboldening Republicans and confounding a new administration's ability to get things done. Boiling Mad is Kate Zernike's eye-opening look inside the Tea Party, introducing us...

I don't think I ever want to meet Steven Thrasher in person. Aside from the fact that the NPR and Village Voice contributor has an ominously violent last name, this dude is p!ssed. Despite this, I'll admit that while reading his recent Voice cover essay on the insanity of white America, I occasionally pictured myself giving Mr. Thrasher a hug. Don't worry, Steven, I'd whisper: Christine O'Donnell is down 15 percent in Delaware. The Islamic community center near Ground Zero will soon be a reality. A single tweet from Sarah Palin doesn't signal the end of white American sanity. (In fact, there is...

The Internet giant AOL libeled Free Republic as "hosting child pornography" in an article published Wednesday, September 22, 2010, at their Daily Finance news site. The site's masthead reads: Daily Finance An AOL Money & Finance Site.Authored by Daily Finance media columnist Jeff Bercovici, the article entitled Muzzled Reporter Says 'Maw of Yahoo' No Place for Journalism tells the story about John Cook's reasons for leaving Yahoo News and returning to his previous gig with Gawker. According to the article, Cook was the senior national affairs reporter for Yahoo's The Upshot news blog. Bercovici notes that he and Cook are...

The AOL-owned site Daily Finance this morning retracted a passage in an article that falsely stated Free Republic hosted child pornography.The article was about reporter John Cook leaving Yahoo News to return to Gawker. Included in Cook's reasons for leaving, according to Daily Finance reporter Jeff Bercovici, was that Yahoo would not allow him to write about Free Republic "hosting child pornography." The Salon.com article that was linked to support that claim actually stated that Free Republic did not host child pornography.The offending Daily Finance passage now reads:"... On similar grounds, he was prohibited from writing about the conservative website...

On Wednesday’s Joy Behar Show on HLN, when a panel discussion turned to the subject of Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell, panel member Judge Karen Mills-Francis of the Judge Karen’s Court show described O’Donnell as having been a "whore" as she listed some of the Senate candidate's past and recent problems. Mills-Francis: "She’s a real train wreck, and the reason why she said that is, I mean, have you looked at this woman’s resume? She was a whore by her own admission. She was an alcoholic. She owed her college $5,000 for 10 years – they had to sue...

SEVERAL weeks after the alleged violent incident that sparked Mel Gibson's public battle with his latest ex-lover, he emailed her to say "I'm a f---ing failure" - to which she replied, "U r amazing man and always will be in my eyes". Oksana Grigorieva's reply, reported by TMZ, sent during a period during which she previously claimed she was in fear for her life, could undermine her side of the story just as she begins a massive PR campaign and lawyers up with a new team.

Look what someone has placed prominently on Wikipedia at very front of the section describing Christine O'Donnells Religious Views: In a 1999 appearance on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, O'Donnell admitted she had "dabbled in witchcraft" and had a "midnight picnic on a satanic altar." Said O'Donnell, “I dabbled into witchcraft - I never joined a coven. But I did, I did. ... I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I'm not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do.”When explaining her experience, she continued,“I mean, there's little blood there...

Plouffe: Limbaugh, Beck and Palin are a problem for GOP President Barack Obama's political adviser, David Plouffe, on Sunday called Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin the leaders of the Republican party — and also a "problem" for the GOP in this fall's elections and beyond. Plouffe emphasized the "intolerance" and "extremism" of the tea party and right wing of Republican party as both a short-term and long-term electoral problem for the moderate GOP, citing their attacks even on conservative senators such as Tom Coburn of Oklahoma as an example of how narrowly they have tailored their messaging and...

The NAACP partnered with Media Matters, Think Progress and New Left Media to launch teapartytracker.org, a website that will specifically publish and monitor “racism and other forms of extremism within the Tea Party movement.” Media Matters and Think Progress representatives said their content and reporting haven’t changed and that the NAACP approached their organizations seeking only to republish select content they’ve produced. The NAACP’s new teapartytracker.org is aimed specifically at highlighting “racism” in the Tea Party. New Left Media, the duo of Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll who use a “Trojan trick” to get interviews with Tea Partiers, is also...

Feds Clear DeLay. He Calls Pelosi “The Swamp”Chad Pergram | August 16, 2010 It's been a long time since former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) got the chance to come out swinging in public. But that's exactly what the feisty former GOP leader did Monday when the Justice Department told his attorneys it closed its inquiry of DeLay after a six year probe. DeLay was his vintage himself during a telephone conference call with reporters. "They didn't have anything," DeLay boasted. "The case was so weak I never did meet with anyone from the Justice Department and never appeared...

WASHINGTON—A lawyer for Tom DeLay said Monday that the Justice Department has ended an investigation of the former congressman and won't file criminal charges. One of Mr. DeLay's lawyers, Richard Cullen, said the Justice Department's Office of Public Integrity informed Mr. DeLay's legal team early last week that it was ending the investigation. Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney declined to comment, which is normally the case when the department ends a criminal probe without filing charges.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has ended its six-year criminal probe of the ties between former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and disgraced ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff without filing any criminal charges against the former congressman. One of DeLay's lawyers, Richard Cullen, said Monday the Justice Department's Office of Public Integrity informed DeLay's legal team early last week that it was ending the investigation. "Six years is a long time and I'm sure he wishes it had happened years ago," Cullen said of the conclusion of the investigation. Cullen added that "for me, the result trumps the timing." Justice Department spokeswoman...

Democrat Bill White's campaign is encouraging Texas' arts crowd to focus on Republican Gov. Rick Perry. A supporter of the former Houston mayor is organizing independent filmmakers to show the short films they are making on behalf of his campaign, White spokesman Katy Bacon said Thursday. The films will premiere at an as-yet unscheduled White campaign event in Austin. The initiative came into the spotlight after Perry's campaign noted that a filmmaker advertised on an actors' website for a look-alike for Perry, the state's longest-serving governor who is known for his thick mane of hair. The impersonator would be cast...

What will it take for the media to acknowledge that the Tea Party is not a racist movement, and that liberals have smeared it as such in a naked politicization of race relations? How about a lefty activist admitting just that. UPenn professor Mary Frances Berry, a leader of the "far-left black political scene," as NB Executive Editor Matt Sheffield wrote,  penned this astonishing email to Politico, published on July 20: Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any...

The Chairman of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele looks to have fallen victim to predatory lending. From The Daily Caller: "According to public documents obtained by Americans for Limited Government (ALG), Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), is as fiscally irresponsible in his personal life as he has been in the management of the RNC. A rough estimate indicates that Steele is obligated to pay 117% of his take-home pay in mortgages and taxes on his $1.7 million home in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. This is no ordinary home, but is a 6,440 square foot mansion with...

The leftist group Think Progress has taken down and edited a video smearing the Tea Party movement as racist after being caught using three year old footage. The group kept in footage and images of leftist provacateurs who were caught infiltrating Tea Party rallies with racist messages.Think Progress originally released a 53 second YouTube video yesterday entitled "Tea Party Racism". That video is now blocked and was replaced this morning with an edited version that runs 50 seconds.Taken out was two short clips of a white man yelling, "Go home wetbacks." That footage turned out to have been posted to...

Over the last few days, a wholly preventable scandal has metastasized for the GOP in Illinois that could very well cost Republicans the Governor’s mansion and “president” Obama’s former Senate seat: both were winnable races, if Republicans had learned from mistakes of the past and gotten in front of a potential problem before it was allowed to yet again reveal the GOP in Illinois to be a myopic boys’ club that protects its own while covering-up anything that could potentially upset their cucumber-and-mayonnaise soggy sandwich cocktail parties. “Romney Republicans” have gotten conservatives into an untenable position yet again.

We have seen this tactic before. Last January, Democrats in Massachusetts sent out a mailer accusing Scott Brown of wanting to deny medical care to rape victims, because he had introduced state legislation providing health care providers with a religious conscience exemption to providing abortion-related services, so long as alternative arrangements were in place. The provision proposed by Brown was almost identical to a provision which was in the Democratic health care bill crafted by Harry Reid. Since such exemption would have applied even to circumstances where the abortion services arose out of a rape, the Democrats played the political...

Jailed money manager Kenneth Starr's wife may be forced back to working the pole. An SEC lawyer said this morning that federal regulators will oppose any attempt to unfreeze Starr's crooked assets to cover living expenses for his ex-stripper wife, Diane Passage, and her 12-year-old son Jordan. Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/kenneth_starr_wife_may_have_to_start_0f5WUSJxcSBW8IV0Ex3FIJ#ixzz0qTj3Jm3o

Has Sarah Palin added to her assets? Rumours are swirling on the Internet that the former U.S. vice president candidate and Alaska governor has gotten breast implants recently. The gossip blog Wonkette received a tip on their Facebook group that it looked like Palin was bustier than usual at the Belmont Stakes in New York on Saturday. Wearing a white T-shirt, Palin looked perkier on the weekend than she has in previous photos, the source told the blog. "Having just now checked our tipster's hunch with another woman ... We can report with confidence that at least two people with...

How does an MSMer imply there's something to the allegations of adultery made against Nikki Haley, a Tea Party fave running for the GOP nomination for governor of South Carolina? Express shock that family-values champion Sarah Palin would come to Haley's defense. That was precisely Bianna Golodryga's gambit this morning. Here's how the co-host of the Good Morning America weekend edition teased an upcoming segment on the subject: View video here.

A new University of Washington poll suggests Tea Party supporters are not just angry about government spending and the new national health care law. "The data tells us this opposition and frustration with government is going hand in hand with a frustration and opposition to racial and ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians," said Matt Barreto, a political science professor and director of UW's Washington Poll.

Opening shot You can't walk down the street in downtown Chicago without people handing you stuff. Menus, mostly, sometimes handbills ballyhooing sales or circuses or whatever. Typically, I accept the flier with a smile, give it a glance, and tuck it in a pocket to toss out later. I figure it's callous to rebuff hardy souls trying to scrape by on street corners. At least they're working. Except when someone offers a colorful brochure touting Jews for Jesus -- then I draw my hand back, the smile dying on my face, and give them what I hope is a hard,...

On the day after his historic primary win, National Public Radio rabidly went after Rand Paul, newly minted GOP nominee for Kentucky Senator, trying to make him out to be a KKK sympathizer or perhaps a racist that would have agreed to keep Jim Crow alive and well in 1964. This rabid, left-wing attack is uncalled for and, further, is meant only to stir anti-Republican hatred and not to help voters discover anything relevant about nominee Rand Paul. Nearly at the top of the interview the host of NPR's All Things Considered tried to paint Mr. Paul as some sort...